Brian Stelter at CNN is doing an excellent nightly newsletter on media, it's free and a great read.

Empowering users to notice "fake news"
By Brian Stelter & the CNNMoney Media team"Fake news" stories sow confusion. People in power, all around the world, benefit from confusion. So users should outsmart them. Refuse to be confused.

That was my message on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." Now it looks like #RefuseToBeConfused has become a hashtag. There has been a ton of conversation about "fake news" all weekend long, partly spurred by a pair of must-read stories in the NYT and the WashPost.

NYT's Sapna Maheshwari showed how made-up claims go viral by tracing one Texas man's false tweet about anti-Trump protesters. That's the bottom-up approach -- one fib on Twitter becomes a story of dozens of web sites. WashPost's Terrence McCoy documented the top-down approach -- how two unemployed restaurant workers started a web site that lies to Trump fans every single day. Seriously, please read McCoy's story, all the way til the end: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/busin ... 98033e792f

"We're the new yellow journalists"
"We're the new yellow journalists," Paris Wade, 26, told McCoy. His experience running "Liberty Writers News" has taught him that "violence and chaos and aggressive wording is what people are attracted to." Business partner Ben Goldman says it's about "shock value." Goldman wrote up a story saying "it was a literal Hell Storm at DNC headquarters today" and laughed at it. "God, I just know everything about this statement is so wrong. What is a hell storm?"

My take: "Fake news" is a symptom of a disease
"Fake news" sources like "Liberty Writers News" are just a symptom of a disease. The disease is distrust. The folks who click on these links and share these stories don't trust real sources, and I don't know if/when that will change. On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," I asserted that we are entering a new age of information warfare, and it's being fought right on your phone. Here are the main points from my essay:

— We're beyond just "red news/blue news" now. We are in an environment where some people are choosing to be colorblind...
— We need a lot more research to understand why online lies are so appealing to some voters...
— Trump himself has been fooled by fake news. Remember when he said "All I know is what's on the Internet?"
— Media literacy is part of the solution. The more media-literate you are, the less likely you will be tricked by propaganda...
— Journalism is also part of the solution. As an industry, we have to redouble our efforts to restore our credibility...
— But these are not full or satisfying solutions. I wish I knew 'em, but I don't. How does this end? Is the U.S. moving into an authoritarian media climate, more like Russia or China, where no one really trusts anything?

Mark Zuckerberg, in a Facebook post over the weekend, says "we take misinformation seriously..." Jim Rutenberg responds to Zuckerberg and says "Truth doesn’t need arbiters. It needs defenders. And it needs them now more than ever..." Margaret Sullivan says Facebook should hire an "executive editor..." Jack Shafer says "fake news, which the supermarket tabloids once excelled at, fills a market need for frivolous hyper-excitement. This need will never vanish..." And Stephen Colbert says "the fact that they call this 'fake news' upsets me because this is just lying..." I

Twitter is the fastest way to see what’s happening and what everyone is talking about. What makes Twitter great is that it’s open to everyone and every opinion. We’ve seen a growing trend of people taking advantage of that openness and using Twitter to be abusive to others.

The amount of abuse, bullying, and harassment we’ve seen across the Internet has risen sharply over the past few years. These behaviors inhibit people from participating on Twitter, or anywhere. Abusive conduct removes the chance to see and share all perspectives around an issue, which we believe is critical to moving us all forward. In the worst cases, this type of conduct threatens human dignity, which we should all stand together to protect.

Because Twitter happens in public and in real-time, we’ve had some challenges keeping up with and curbing abusive conduct. We took a step back to reset and take a new approach, find and focus on the most critical needs, and rapidly improve. There are three areas we’re focused on, and happy to announce progress around today: controls, reporting, and enforcement.

Twitter has long had a feature called “mute” which enables you to mute accounts you don’t want to see Tweets from. Now we’re expanding mute to where people need it the most: in notifications. We’re enabling you to mute keywords, phrases, and even entire conversations you don’t want to see notifications about, rolling out to everyone in the coming days. This is a feature we’ve heard many of you ask for, and we’re going to keep listening to make it better and more comprehensive over time.

Our hateful conduct policy prohibits specific conduct that targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. Today we’re giving you a more direct way to report this type of conduct for yourself, or for others, whenever you see it happening. This will improve our ability to process these reports, which helps reduce the burden on the person experiencing the abuse, and helps to strengthen a culture of collective support on Twitter.

And finally, on enforcement, we’ve retrained all of our support teams on our policies, including special sessions on cultural and historical contextualization of hateful conduct, and implemented an ongoing refresher program. We’ve also improved our internal tools and systems in order to deal more effectively with this conduct when it’s reported to us. Our goal is a faster and more transparent process.

We don’t expect these announcements to suddenly remove abusive conduct from Twitter. No single action by us would do that. Instead we commit to rapidly improving Twitter based on everything we observe and learn.

Thank you for choosing Twitter to amplify your voice to the world. We honor our role in protecting your right to speak freely, and our collective responsibility to human dignity.

Alphabet Inc's Google (GOOGL.O) and Facebook Inc (FB.O) on Monday announced measures aimed at halting the spread of "fake news" on the internet by targeting how some purveyors of phony content make money: advertising.

Google said it is working on a policy change to prevent websites that misrepresent content from using its AdSense advertising network, while Facebook updated its advertising policies to spell out that its ban on deceptive and misleading content applies to fake news.

The shifts comes as Google, Facebook and Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) face a backlash over the role they played in the U.S. presidential election by allowing the spread of false and often malicious information that might have swayed voters toward Republican candidate Donald Trump.

The issue has provoked a fierce debate within Facebook especially, with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg insisting twice in recent days that the site had no role in influencing the election.

Facebook's steps are limited to its ad policies, and do not target fake news sites shared by users on their news feeds.

In other threads, we've been talking about fake news sites and their role in the election of the Orange Menace, along with willful confusion of Americans. There are discussions underway to create countersites (not with fake news, but a more aggressive tone with facts). This may be worth it's own topic as things shake out.

Several groups I'm on have been working with Twitter and Facebook, Zuckerberg just announced some of what's getting worked on. It's important to report fake news, anyone on FB can do that. Teams are being retrained, indexing is being worked on and reporting is going to a new group now. It's been busy but going well.

A fake billboard appears in the site NESARA News. It is supposedly in Dearborn, Michigan, and supposedly carries a message "America We Will Kill You All Allah Be Praised." This appeared in 2014 on the Web and might even be older.

A problem is that this is a hate site on which we will have zero influence. All the debunking that went on in 2014 had no lasting effect.

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Kurt Vonnegut

I cannot tell from the One World Conspiracy/Aliens sites whether Trump is to be president of the U.S.A. Corporation of 1871 or president of the Republic of the united States of America. It must be a bother running a fake news site when the unexpected happens.

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Kurt Vonnegut

I do object to one inclusion on that list because I "know" (virtually) a couple of writers there: Crooks and Liars. What is the criteria for inclusion on the list?

What list? I posted a link to one last week but it disappeared. It was going to be revised. The creator of the list and her students got so many threats, that she pulled it. Is it back? It's was not just a list of fake news, but also click bait sites and satire. There were other categories too. What category was C and L in? I stopped visiting it long ago. It took too long to load anything I wanted to see.

Will Reality Check revive his BTR program?
Shall we all take to the air and use our own voices to counter the crazy?
I posited the above on FB group and was met with "oh, but Air America.." and other lazy crap that saddened me. My own station, netroots radio is a mixed bag of speaking out. fuuuuuuuu

"It is wrong to say God made rich and poor; He only made male and female, and He gave them the Earth as their inheritance."- Thomas Paine, Forward to Agrarian JusticeCancer broke me

kate520 wrote:The original list, esseff. I perused it the day it came out.

The list was up only a few hours. The reaction to even having such a list was vicious. The hoaxers and alt-right went beserk. The reactions are still up but as far as I can find, there is no revised list as the communications instructor intended to do.

I'm glad to hear Google, Facebook and Twitter are trying to take steps to help reduce the amount of crap that gets passed through their services. So much of the Obama hate was fuelled by fake stories, and the level of Clinton hate (not to mention Trump love) is even worse.

I don't have the link anymore, but a couple weeks ago BuzzFeed had an article looking at how much false information was being spread by hyperpartisian sites on both the left and right. Unsurprisingly, the amount of crap on the right was much larger than it was on the left, but the left is hardly clean. I've run into a number of sites that don't necessarily publishing fake news, but they certainly publish a lot if things that are misleading. Among the worst offenders I've come across are PoliticusUSA, Daily News Bin, and Bipartisan Report, and BuzzFeed noted The Other 98% and Occupy Democrats as frequent offenders.

Kriselda Gray wrote:
Unsurprisingly, the amount of crap on the right was much larger than it was on the left, but the left is hardly clean. I've run into a number of sites that don't necessarily publishing fake news, but they certainly publish a lot if things that are misleading. Among the worst offenders I've come across are PoliticusUSA, Daily News Bin, and Bipartisan Report, and BuzzFeed noted The Other 98% and Occupy Democrats as frequent offenders.

I think it was in '08 when I discovered PoliticusUSA and enjoyed the rants. Within a couple of years I realized how distorted the reporting was, even though it fed my bias and love of mock. Occupy Democrats was removed from my reading list even earlier. Nonetheless, when I posted information on some forums showing the misreporting and distortions being quoted from those websites, I was blasted. Yeah, the left isn't anywhere near as bad in terms of quantity, but it can equally vicious.

Eric Tucker, a 35-year-old co-founder of a marketing company in Austin, Tex., had just about 40 Twitter followers. But his recent tweet about paid protesters being bused to demonstrations against President-elect Donald J. Trump fueled a nationwide conspiracy theory — one that Mr. Trump joined in promoting.

Mr. Tucker's post was shared at least 16,000 times on Twitter and more than 350,000 times on Facebook. The problem is that Mr. Tucker got it wrong. There were no such buses packed with paid protesters.

But that didn't matter.

While some fake news is produced purposefully by teenagers in the Balkans or entrepreneurs in the United States seeking to make money from advertising, false information can also arise from misinformed social media posts by regular people that are seized on and spread through a hyperpartisan blogosphere.

Here, The New York Times deconstructs how Mr. Tucker’s now-deleted declaration on Twitter the night after the election turned into a fake-news phenomenon. It is an example of how, in an ever-connected world where speed often takes precedence over truth, an observation by a private citizen can quickly become a talking point, even as it is being proved false.

And that is exactly my aversion to twitter. We've had this discussion before during breaking news stories and my opinion hasn't changed. Think back to Sandy Hook and all the disconnect between tweets and actual news, and then consider how much of the tweeting was bullshit but is still believed. I have nothing but gut instinct to back up my theory, but it seems to me that "first heard, most believed" might apply.

As much as I hate to give the Great Pumpkin credit for being right about something, I think we do need libel law reform. Being able to lie more or less with total impunity against someone just because they are a public figure is wrong and it is hurting our democracy.

Imagine for a moment if the first time someone said that Obama wasn't eligible to be president because he was born in Kenya that he sued their ass the next day and only had to prove that it was a lie and that they had a negligent (or even reckless) disregard for the truth? That would have put a damper on the whole birther thing real quick.

You have a situation now where anyone can make up anything about a politician, spread it over social media to millions of people who will believe almost anything that fits inside their world view, and there is no practical recourse to the person who was slandered.

"Let's say you're on trial for armed robbery. You say to the judge, 'I forgot armed robbery was illegal.' "

Major Advertising Technology Company Bars Breitbart News for Hate Speech

Bloomberg article. You will have to search for the title.

AppNexus Inc., operator of one of the biggest digital advertising services, has barred Breitbart News from using its ad-serving tools because the conservative online publisher violated its hate speech rules

The new controls on Facebook don't seem to be working well. Jim wright was banned for his post on nazis.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Wright explained that Facebook had notified him that his account had been suspended for “violation of community standards.”

“The community standard I violated is apparently the one where you’re not allowed to criticize actual, no fooling, Nazis,” he wrote. “That’s right, I was banned for criticizing an actual Nazi.”

Wright has promised that he will not back down if and when Facebook reinstates his account — even if it means he is banned again.

“Those who know me, know that I am a veteran who fought under the flag of the United States of America for more than 20 years, can probably guess which way I’ll go,” he wrote. “Given America’s new acceptance of fascism, I suspect platforms like Facebook and Twitter will either have to become more accommodating of actual fascist ideology and less tolerant of people like me, or risk going to the wall themselves – especially given that our new president has made it very clear that he intends to directly control how the media, including social media, reports on his administration.”

NEW YORK (AP) — A new report suggests a "sophisticated" Russian propaganda campaign helped flood social media with fake news stories leading up to the presidential election.

The Washington Post, citing a yet-to-be published report from independent researchers, said the goal was to punish Hillary Clinton, help Donald Trump, and undermine faith in American democracy.

The report comes from a nonpartisan group of researchers called PropOrNot. The group describes itself as "concerned American citizens" with expertise in computer science, national security and public policy. The researchers say they traced the origins of posts and mapped the connections among accounts that delivered similar messages.

The findings show just how effective the bogus reports and propaganda were, according to the report. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed 213 million times.https://www.yahoo.com/news/report-russi ... 51117.html

Dan1100 wrote:As much as I hate to give the Great Pumpkin credit for being right about something, I think we do need libel law reform. Being able to lie more or less with total impunity against someone just because they are a public figure is wrong and it is hurting our democracy.

Yes, there is a continuum between absolute free speech (including making up defamatory crap) and North Korean rules of praise the Great Leader or die. The happy medium is the free expression of opinions based in reality. In the days of responsible news media there were editors to filter out a lot of the nonsense. The news media no longer fulfil that role and the twittersphere exacerbates the problem so the sewer of hate-fueled lies runs wide and fast.

In failing to prevent continued defamation and harassment of Clinton and Obama, the law fails. As you say, it should not be acceptable or permissible to tell big lies about a person simply because s/he is deemed to be a public person.

What Sam said. Adding that it is not just in the area of politics that such 'free expression' based on insults, resentment and pernicious lies harm the social fabric. All areas of human activity are affected.

I don't believe him when he says it's not about the money. He say he's interested in introducing fake news to the alt-rt. and then debunking it and laughing and pointing. i don't remember hearing anything about that part.

At what point do you say to yourself 'hey, these guys buy we write everything hook, line and sinker! It then becomes verified truth, part of their catalogue of grievances against the whoever/whatever/flavor of the month. Debunking makes it stick harder. Maybe I should stop.' ?

I don't find this kind of stuff amusing no more.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a Scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson
April 7, 1775

I don't know where else to post this.. apparently this is a "thing"- #Pizzagate

I have read about it for a few days.. I finally tried to figure out what it was. It is a vile fake news story.

Earlier this month, the Infowars crowd used a Wiki-leaked dinner invite to John Podesta from the artist Marina Abramovic as evidence the Democratic Party is run by depraved occultists whose favorite foods are FRESH SPERM MILK and NIGHTMARE DREAMS. Now that Satanic conspiracy theory has morphed into one called “Pizzagate” that exists at the intersection of fake news, right-wing hysteria, and the culture wars. According to Vigilant Citizen and Infowars, Washington D.C. is controlled by a ring of pedophiles who use symbols and code words to communicate their forbidden desires to each other. At the epicenter is Comet Ping Pong, a “cool” D.C. pizzeria owned by prominent Democrat James Alefantis, where people gather to eat, play ping pong, and (allegedly) engage in child sex trafficking. (Potentially relevant: Alefantis used to date David Brock, the founder of Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog organization that combats fake news.)
It doesn't even make sense I'll post some links on it.